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Church Hurt

 


I just wanted to make God proud of me. I was in college, and I needed a job to be able to live off campus. The school was more expensive if you lived in the dorms, and I already was borrowing a lot of money that I knew I would have to pay back someday. What better job than to work for a church. I had already cleaned with my grandparents from the time I was ten years old, and now I could be paid for making God's house look good. It was a win-win situation. Boy was I wrong.

At first, I just swept, vacuumed, mopped, wiped, lifted, organized, moved, and thrown out with a song of praise in my heart. I knew that I was cleaning "up the temple for my Lord", and I felt like what I was doing was pleasing to God. Then things changed. At our work meetings, we would be told things like "You should be happy to even have a job at all". The pastor would find trash on the other side of the church, walk up to me, and place the trash in my hand to throw away. Then, during service, we would have to hide to listen to the message because we were told "We don't want to see you all just sitting around" Constantly, treated like we did nothing, although, everyone talked about how clean the church looked. One day in my frustration I told a friend that "if I wasn't a Christian already, working here wouldn't make me want to be one", but my "friend" told the pastor and his wife. So, one day after service the Pastor's wife came up to us with her husband a few rows behind, and asked, "Are you all ok? Is working here making you lose your Christianity?" I laughed because I couldn't believe that this was happening. Then in anger, she said, "I wouldn't stay anywhere that made me lose my Christianity", and she stomped off. At that time I became angry and said a lot to my coworker that I probably should not have said in a church. However, it upset me that that was the response to the hurt I had felt from working there. There are many reasons people work in places that they don't like, but it was a shame that the people in the church made what had felt like ministry into misery. 

Over the years I have had constant heartbreaking and harsh interactions with people in the church. I have also seen things in the church that have been unnecessary. As an African American Christian these past few years have been very tough when you hear what has come from the pulpit as politics and Christianity have further morphed into a weird creature that offends. It used to be a conviction in the truth of God's word that made me uncomfortable at times in church, but it also made me want to be better. However, now it's the ridiculous politically driven blurtings of the pastor that make me want to leave a church, and never return.

There are countless people who have left the church over the past few years as worship of Jesus became secondary to worship of political parties, but I would encourage you to come back. The word of God says that we are to assemble together as believers. So, it is not the humans that are important, it is Jesus that is most important. I know you have been hurt by those who are to represent Jesus and the love of God, but I pray that you find a church where Jesus is at the center, a magnet that draws all believers together.

I pray that God would heal the places that the church has harmed.

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